Study: Lies Spread Quicker and Farther Than Truth

Over the years the Internet and social media have proved themselves valuable resources for our daily lives.

In tandem, the two have provided us with an invaluable means of communication, allowing us to gather and share a wide range of information.

But the Internet along with social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have also become powerful and effective tools for the unscrupulous to spread disinformation or what some have come to call “fake news.”

A new study published in the journal Science has found, on the popular social media platform, Twitter, false information travels faster and farther than true or factual material.

The researchers discovered that false information was 70% more likely to be retweeted than truthful material.

While they found that the top 1% of false-news would regularly spread to between a 1,000 to 100,000 people, the truth by comparison seldom spread to more than 1,000 people.